Can you feel it? (pollution)

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QuantumBalance
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Can you feel it? (pollution)

Post by QuantumBalance » 04 Jun 2010 02:29

Hi old friends. It's been a while.

Can you feel it? Climategate aside, the levels of toxic pollution are steadily rising. We are post industrialization. The wonders are marvelous; I had a lovely Ipad experience once, and the internet has increased my intelligence many times... oh sweet brainpower! But, the level of pollution is horrendous. All economics aside, all climate thange theories aside, the level of pollution is changing earth's ecosystem. The rate of change is increasing sporatically and almost exponentially. Civilization's dependance on systems that output massive harmful waste products will be fatal. The movement to "go green" so to speak does not seem to be effective at curbing environmental pollution when against the ecopolitical systems of profit drivin military world government.

Have you been watching the news?

Can you feel what's comming? (What, when you simulate the next 100 years (or less), do you feel the quality of life is going to be like for your family?)

Does your answer to this make you want to change your lifestyle?

Who changes your lifestyle? (you or someone else?)

My friend is waiting for the zombie apocalypse, I think its happening right under his nose.

Just a bit of fun and food for thought... Good luck yall.

Stay informed on global events (the second link is the best, but I recomend cross refference):

http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=en&tab=wn
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/1/pg1/srtpages
http://www.deoxy.odd

In flames,
The Quantum Samurai

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QuantumBalance
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Post by QuantumBalance » 04 Jun 2010 02:36

If you feel like all that makes sense to you then pm me and I can teach you some cool tricks. :c)

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Jeremy
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Post by Jeremy » 05 Jun 2010 00:18

Interesting topic. I think the idea of pollution is much more complicated than is often presented. What do we mean by pollution? I guess a typical definition is products from a human origin that have a detrimental impact on the environment, but even with a definition like that, there is a lot of grey area. For example you mention climate change a lot. The big concern with climate change (at least for me) isn't so much the emissions that we release directly, but the "natural" emissions that are released because of the warming that we cause. If the Amazon rainforest starts dying, methane hydrates are released from the ocean and atmospheric water vapour increases, are these pollutants or not? I don't know.

On most issues of pollution we actually have a very good track record. Things like air quality and acid rain have improved dramatically around the world, especially in developed countries. Most pollutants peaked decades ago and are declining. If you look at things like sulphur dioxide or chloro fluro carbons, I think we're doing really well. There are still lots of places that are heavily polluted of course, but our understanding of fluid dynamics, water tables and mechanisms for cleaning up pollution have really improved, so in countries like Australia and presumably the US we're getting control of the issue.

I think the big pollutants that I'm most concerned about, apart from greenhouse gasses, is nitrogen, used as fertilizer for many agricultural crops but causing big marine problems as run off, resulting in massive algae blooms, followed by anoxic seas. It seems that most land, at least in Australia, is either already heavily degraded or protected, and that the trend is towards re-vegetating and protecting more land, rather than expanding our agriculture. So our protection of the terrestrial environment is good, and getting better (although there's a fair bit of delay between clearing land and ecological reactions, so that's one of the reasons for extinctions due to habitat loss still occurring in Australia despite our increased awareness). On the other hand our marine protection is not nearly as good. We're lucky in Australia that our currents make anoxic zones less likely to occur than in other places, but the run off is still definitely having a pretty significant impact, and in other places around the world it's really serious.

What can we do about it? Well lots and hardly anything, depending on the scale. Something I decided not that long ago, and I hope nobody takes offence at this, but to view it as like the holocaust or some kind of epic tragedy on that scale. I read the transcript of an excellent talk by Philip Zimbardo (psychologist famous for the so called "Stanford Experiment") a while ago about heroes;

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/zimbard ... index.html

While I guess it's arrogant to think of myself of a hero, people think that I'm arrogant anyway, at least on modified, and reading this made me think that if I were in those kinds of situations I would much rather do whatever I could that was right, than just worry about myself. I really hope that if put in the situation of the holocaust, I'd do whatever I could to save as many lives as I could, even at the expense of my own.

Of course I'll probably never be in that situation, but I take inspiration from that on environmental issues. Even if in the grand scheme of things my actions are meaningless, I want to try my hardest and fail, instead of not trying at all. In a way I see the environmental issues we face, especially climate change, as far more serious than anything humanity has ever faced. I think it's inevitable now that literally hundreds of millions of people will suffer and die because of climate change. Probably not that many within my life time, but climate change isn't one event that we pay for and then recover from - the changes we've made so far will last for tens of thousands of years, and it will take centuries before we approach climate equilibrium again, and decades after that before humans adapt to our new environments.

Our actions, even the smallest of them will change the speed that this happens at, and our actions will contribute either to people's deaths or to saving their lives. We'll never see the direct consequences of our actions, but knowing what they are is empowering none the less. In this context, I'm trying to do as much as I can to save as many lives as I can. Again, I'd rather try my hardest and fail, than not try at all.

What am I doing? Well I'm lucky enough to live in a place where all my electricity comes from hydro power. I don't own or drive a car. Almost all the food I eat is locally grown. I eat very little meat, and most of the meat I do eat is locally grown. I avoid processed food. I've estimated my CO2 emissions to be less than 1/10th of the national average, although Australia is one of the worst countries in the world, so that's not a massive achievement. More than that though, because those are all relatively superficial, the degree I'm studying at university (biology and geography) is aimed specifically at understanding and hopefully being able to put myself into a position to help the issue in a meaningful manner in the future.

I'm not dogmatic about this, and I'm not perfect. I've flown 6 times in the last 12 months, which is probably 6 too many and my biggest source of emissions is probably the amount of alcohol I consume (it certainly was according to one of the CO2 footprint tests I did). Although this post probably contradicts me, I'm not self righteous about this. You're responsible for your choices and the evidence is available for you to read. If your conscious allows you to pollute more than I do, that's your business. I don't think I've ever preached to anybody anything about this issue except for when they bring it up.

Of course I have a lot of self doubt. All the literature I've read recently has made me feel like the issue is hopeless. I'm regularly tempted to give up on everything, find the highest paying job I can find, then go live as a modern hermit in the mountains. Where I live is one of the few places in the world that probably won't have our environment badly impacted by climate change (in terms of what humans need anyway). One of the books I read recently said that the only rational response to the evidence is "despair." Maybe that's true.

Despite how I'm sure this post sounds, I'm not a radical. Sam C and I have completely different philosophies on life and the world. I disagree with probably 90% of what I hear hippies say. Yet on this issue, on a long term time scale, I think they're essentially right. If, instead of talking about 2100, we talk about 2500, our current societies are in big trouble.

So yeah, pollution concerns me. I wish there was more I could do about it. I wish there was anything I could do about it. I wish I could pretend I didn't know anything about it, and I can only keep trying to do anything about it by continuing to think that I'd rather try my hardest and fail, than not try at all.

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Post by BainbridgeShred » 09 Jun 2010 08:49

It seems that most land, at least in Australia, is either already heavily degraded or protected, and that the trend is towards re-vegetating and protecting more land, rather than expanding our agriculture.
Re-vegetation and expanding agriculture are capable of going hand in hand. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sohI6vnWZmk

Agroforestry has a loooott of potential
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